


If You Now Knew

by ParadoxR



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s04e16 2010, Episode: s05e10 2001, F/M, Missing Scene, alternative ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 15:01:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1822678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadoxR/pseuds/ParadoxR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If we can face anything together, what could drive us apart?</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Now Knew

_Oh God._

“It's that?” Her head bolts up, staring at the too-innocent words as they freeze in the air. “That's why you left? …That's why you gave up?”  _On us…on me._

O'Neill turns to the former colonel, but the look on his face matches the back of his head.

 

It doesn't matter.  _He left._   _I_ _did_ _this._ All because she didn't... _No_. All those years ago.

“It is, isn’t it?”

“ ‘Gave up?’ ”

“I’d bought them already.” She blinks too slowly, riding lips softened by years of compromise and humdrumness. “But I wanted so badly to believe you. I tried so hard to prove it.” Sam shakes her head at the man she’s not actually talking to. “I know you hated that I needed that, but we could’ve…” She sinks backwards, stunned, her words tripping silently with her. “He never knew.”

Carter shifts slightly, shielding her own discomfit at the woman from almost everyone except her CO. She knuckles in, pulling up her elder self’s eyes. _You’re here for a reason?_

Sam nods, steadying herself ineffectively.  _Move it, Sam. Carter._

_Go die._

She looks up at the concrete ceiling, wondering briefly whether alternative futures can get to a heaven she’s long since stopped believing in. Maybe she could find him there. But she wouldn't…the dizziness of killing 6 billion people sets in again, and she crashes down too roughly.

 

“Colonel” His question isn't punctuated, leading. Always leading.

Colonel. God, and how long ago was that? How could she tell that  _kid_  that she had to...that she alone... _that I can destroy the world._

“Major…” She can't breathe. Jac—the Colo—he gestures the kid forward.

“Major…you…” She sighs. “Don’t let this break you.” He's still studying her silently. She's weak now.  _God, how is he so right all the time?_

“What's wrong, Ma'am?” The honorific rolls of with an internally practiced ease. Sam winces to her young self, who searches for what to proffer. “We need to know” Curiosity tempered by professionalism. Because everything is.

“The reason I'm not dead yet.” She tries to be blunt, but everything about it seems choked.  _6 billion people._

“We don't believe your future.”

No. God, “You won’t…It's not me you need to believe.” _You’ve failed the universe._  Who’d throw away victory for prophecy? “When you walked away. I couldn't understand it. I always thought that we…” That they’d face it. That he’d find the problem, and he’d let her find the solution.

It takes Jack a minute to realize she was again talking about him.  _What could you have done to her, you bastard?_ His internal thing-he-ignores kicks him dizzily.

“Sam.” Because calling herself ‘major’ wasn’t going to cut it. She digs back, remembering the sound of every word she’s said but only foggily searching for what else to do.  _6 billion people._

“You're going to have to find a way to deal with this, Sam.” I can't. “I can't.” She shudders to her feet, internally pinning back on her eagles. After all these years, to have “the knowledge that you personally could have killed _6 billion people_. By making the same choice you make every day.” We always made. “You've always made.” She meets the young officer’s resilient gaze, finally digging her command voice out from years of mediation. “That your personal thoughts can be what sinks or saves an entire planet of your people. You're going to have to deal with that, Major.”  _How can you ask this to not destroy her?_  “I…I can't do it.”  _6 billion people. 6 billion people, and I’m not dead._

Jack watches his deputy's brow furrow, searching for the right thing to say. Feel, she'd worry about later. Or not at all. That was more his major's style, not to mention his.  _'You walked away.'_ … _You'll break her, this way._  It was almost enough for him to lock out the address all on its own.

 

“I tried so hard.” The elder’s eyes are on him now. Older inside, even than his. Their guard had crumbled, though not in a way he’s ever dreamed of.  _Please._ Please?  _Forgive me._ The exchange is far too quick: she’d been a CO, even with whatever mistake they’d both made.

“Every day. I tried so hard to fight it. …I won.” He furrows at her in weak comfort. _It’s not your fault._ With every crazy decision they make every day—she makes usually, despite the shield he tries to be—he’s surprised they don’t get twenty would-be cautioners a week.

She huffs, churning tears buried under years of command and eons of thought. Commander, problem-solver…and yet it’s all he can do not to take those three strides and scoop her into him.  _His_ Sam. His _her_ , in a future… _in a future where she has to beg you to die, Jack._

Both faces re-harden in seconds. His Carter, indeed. “It's going to hit you, Major. When I disappear. That it's not melodramatic. That 6 billion people can't be. This needs to be done.” She shakes her head. _6 billion people._ “But there are far too many other ways you matter. And that's something…I don't know how to take it.” _You could’ve saved the world._

He wonders if those unguarded eyes would ever see light in their own future. Whether they’d ever get the chance to meet his own. Or whether they might ever need to.

“That the one thing you've never been allowed to do, that you still aren't allowed to do, in the name of protecting my people is the one thing I failed to do when it could have saved them.” She’s exactly loud enough, but he suddenly he’s straining to hear anyway.

“I have a decade and far too many regrets on you, Major, and I can't do it. The treaty, Joe’s lie,”  _Bastard._  “made me soft. But losing him…It made me weak. Diffident, really.” Her tone should’ve been a rough smile, but her eyes just flash more grimly. _  
_

Sam forces her eyes from the wall beyond his shoulder to the eyes of her younger self. She glances at the bloodied note still in the major's gloved hand, and feels the blood drifting down her own back where the blast had thrown her through the sun-flared Gate.

…It’s the determination there in those eyes that convinces her. Strength, overwriting not a little concern. And fear. She feels it all in his as well, though she can’t yet look at him. She'd lost that chance: lost that future by following the present she'd always known she had to.

 _But did you?_ Letting him live alone, die by her will, never _knowing_. She bites, but the thought’s still there.

 

She forces herself to his eyes, possibly managing not to plead to him again. She pleads through him, sinking into those eyes and begging heaven for the chance she’d ruined. The trust she hadn't earned from the man whose faith in her  _(and vice versa, Sam, this is all your damn fault)_  could never afford to fail. Wouldn’t, now, if she was right.

And she was right. She steels her voice if not her mind.

“Don’t argue about locking out ‘970. What you need to know, what you've always needed to know”  _what I killed him before he knew_  “is that I'm in love with you.”

_Push me, Jack. We’ll find—_

And she was gone.

* * *

 

 

A/N: I'm still roughing it out, but this is my most logical answer as to why Jack would've left over the Aschen, as I doubt Sam just ignored his concerns. And isn't that a hell of a burden for someone to live with. Or die with. Anyone interested in this line?


End file.
